C&C on my new website...please...

It's a nice first effort.

Good. The images. You are a skilled photographer, and that of course is the sine qua non.

Bad. You need to do a lot of editing. You have way too many images on the screen at once. Either edit down to about half the images, or make sub-directories by theme (like you have done in other places). A professional website should not have 30 thumbnails visible at one time, and should never require you to scroll down to see them all.

Bad. You search does not work. I tried "butterfly", since I saw that you had photos of them. But nothing came up. Is your search tied to your image keywords? If not, what is the intended use for the search?

You need to re-arrange some of your directory structures. You have "About Ordering Prints" under 'Galleries.' That is not where it should be. Similarly, you have "Book Portrait Sessions" also in 'Galleries,' under the sub-directory 'Portraits.' I understand why you put it there, but maybe consider keeping all of your "business" stuff in one separate directory? Booking portrait, sessions, ordering greeting cards, buying prints, etc.? At least, that's how I see it in other pro's websites, and that makes more logical sense to me. I was always taught in building business websites that the easiest thing to do/find should be how to place an order. You have the information buried, and you may miss out on some potential business.

You may want to bite the bullet and pay a professional site designer to do this for you. (Although, I must admit, I've been too cheap to do it myself, and I also have received lots of criticism about my non-professional-looking website.

Don't lose hope. Each version you do will get better and better. :-)
 
Just wanted to add to what Shutterbug said, that I find the Lightbox effect slightly distracting when I can still see the other thumbnails behind the image.

I'd agree that your directory structure needs resorting, and I really would not go to more than one level of drop down menu unless I had a very large site (think 40 pages plus). I'd put all the Galleries on one drop down, and all the purchase information on another called either 'How to Order' or 'How to Buy'. Make it obvious on one of the menu headers that you have items for sale!

Likewise under the greeting cards section, you really need to put a name or reference next to each image if you want people to email you their orders. Admittedly there are names on the tooltips and enlarged pop ups, but never underestimate a customer's ability to get something wrong!

The pictures are good though! :D
 
You clearly have talent!

I agree that the thumbnails could be larger, but don't have a problem with having to scroll. The site is a little slow (but not terrible), but you may not have much control over that.

I was a little disappointed that there were no images in the portrait gallery because I know you have some beautiful portraits - from your challenge entries.

Take a nice long break and come back and do a little more work on the site. You have a good start - especially the photos!
--
AEH
http://aehass.zenfolio.com/
Question: What do you do all week?
Answer: Mon to Fri. Nothing, Sat & Sun I rest!
 
I will echo what has been said about the site, it works well with the thumb nails and the site will improve as your idea's get better and you know what you are doing more. Photos are full of colour and there are some lovely shots, you clearly love frogs, ha ha good work :-)
 
You clearly have talent!

I agree that the thumbnails could be larger, but don't have a problem with having to scroll. The site is a little slow (but not terrible), but you may not have much control over that.

I was a little disappointed that there were no images in the portrait gallery because I know you have some beautiful portraits - from your challenge entries.

Take a nice long break and come back and do a little more work on the site. You have a good start - especially the photos!
--
AEH
http://aehass.zenfolio.com/
Question: What do you do all week?
Answer: Mon to Fri. Nothing, Sat & Sun I rest!
Ed at Ridersite....can you check again the portraits gallery from your end? It should be full of images...lots of my entries. I will officially die if they are not there!
They are there now as Im looking...would you mind trying again?

Thanks
Angela
 
Hi Angela,

I could see all your images with no problem, so if there was a issue, it sounds like it was going on on the end of the poster. All (other than the search) seems to be working fine, at least based on my experience.
 
Great photos. I really like photo "nature 1-33" (the frog on the leaf). Frogs are cool.

For site design, I like but too many broken links, dead ends: the "photo galleries" and "greeting cards" links are broken. Also, there no photos or links in Portraits section. I have to click link "portrait gallery" to see photos. The navigation could be improved.
 
Ed at Ridersite....can you check again the portraits gallery from your end? It should be full of images...lots of my entries. I will officially die if they are not there!
They are there now as Im looking...would you mind trying again?

Thanks
Angela
I also thought there were no images at portrait menu. I didn't notice at first there was a submenu on portrait menu. By chance i went there again and then i noticed.

I like the site. It's easy. I like the photographs too.
 
Hi Angela

I like the look of your website. Your photos are good and enjoyable to view; which is the most important part - the website will come together if you stick at it. Bit like learning Photoshop! :)

Couple of comments: Firstly you come over on here as a warm person and I'd rethink the '3rd person' approach on your home page - maybe go for a more personal approach, especially with the type of services you are offering.

Lastly, you have one or two typos on the Home Page. I'll let you scan for them. Or better still let somebody else read through it as their eyes will be fresh. :P

--

'The whole idea of learning Photography is to reduce the number of Monkeys it takes.'
 
Thanks so much everyone for your valuable feedback...have made a few changes tonight , based on them..

Be back in next few days to address them personally...

Cheers
Angela
 
really lovely photos! I enjoyed looking through the childrens' portraits a lot.
found it easy to navigate and pretty quick to load.

saw a spelling error under the Greeting Cards menu ( "ocassional"="occasional" )
 
The portrait gallery works fine now. Don't know what the issue was earlier. All I saw then was a gallery page with no photos.
--
AEH
http://aehass.zenfolio.com/
Question: What do you do all week?
Answer: Mon to Fri. Nothing, Sat & Sun I rest!
 
Hi everyone, thanks for that excellent feedback and based on that weve made some changes. Have a look and see what you think.....

I have a web guy and he and I have worked together to create the site. He does all the technical side at which I have no idea about. I have no maths or technology brain..only creative brain.

I have to do it this way until I am skilled in this area...many years away Im sure. For me a matter of time, raising small children. Ive found it really hard to get this far!

Shutterbug, I know I have too many images! I find it so hard to cull them because everyone has their favourites and often they are different. Ive had people upset that Ive culled an image that they loved and bought as a greeting card. Im working on it.

DemiLion...great, you think the directory is better? I dont know why I didnt see it initially...it makes total sense to do it the new way.

I know...the images need renaming and thankyou for pointing that out. It has driven my tech guy crazy the way they are currently named so we will have to work on that.

Ed...thanks for checking that...weve re structured those directories so the portraits are seen immediately.

Liya...thanks Ive fixed that spelling error. Hard to see with bloodshot eyes!

Keironpalmer..laughed at your frogs comment...yes I love them and they live in our water tank so I just scoop one out when i need a shoot. My freind tells me many of them seem angry...hahaha.

Finally Drewbie...you have no idea how many drafts of that text Ive done. My 1st,2nd and 3rd were much more casual but they seemed far too conversational so I reverted to 3rd person. Its a good point you make and one Ive grappled with. I will keep thinking about it.

Angela
 
It's a good upgrade, and looks a lot slicker, but there are still a few points to address for fine tuning.

Bear in mind that I do websites, so these points are minor and forgive me for being picky! :D

Front/Intro page - great

About Page- v good, except that I would make the following text into a hyperlink to the relevant pages, but without underlining on mouse over (your tech guy will understand):
"These talents are now available in several artistic formats including cards and wall art
change to:
"These talents are now available in several artistic formats, including greeting cards and high quality wall art ."
-link those to the 'ordering cards' and 'ordering prints' pages.
"For something more personal, portraiture and individualized shoots are a specialty . Angela is available for commercial and advertising assignments ."
-link the first to 'portrait session' page and include some blurb in there about commercial availability for the second, or better yet create a separate commercial page and link to it.

By repeating the relevant text on various pages 'greetings cards', 'portraits', 'high quality wall art' etc, and then including those phrases in your meta keywords for the relevant page, you are effectively SEO'ing your site.

You also need a page title on each page with H1 tags, but it doesn't need to be large, bold or underlined (you can change that in CSS), it just needs the H1 brackets. H1 tags are another SEO trigger, and are best used when they echo either the keywords or page description in your metatags.

For example on the about page, have a title of 'about us' in lower case but with a slightly lighter colour as an H1. The same goes for each separate page including each gallery.

With the galleries you need to group the photos a bit better and change the thumbnail view:

I'd stick to 2 to 3 lines of thumbnails on each page, and then have a page 2 if necessary, preferably not as an extra menu item if your gallery software allows it (there should be a facility to limit the number of thumbnails shown per page). In preference have about 12-18 per page in two or three rows of thumbs and make them slightly larger.

Group your thumbnails by type, rather than have them inserted slightly randomly; ie all the b/w together, all the colour together.

Likewise, with the cards, group your subjects by type; all the frogs, all the pencils, all the cars in the same gallery next to each other. It makes it slightly less confusing for the eye. Another approach (as you are selling the images) would be to group them by dominant colour, but overall the idea is that patterns make people comfortable, whereas randomness confuses them and can make them leave quicker than you would like!

In some cases you have a few repeated images with different themes; for example the Lighthouse in b/w and colour, and the cars. Unless you are offering choices for sale (which obviously you are in the case of the cars) I'd decide on one version and go with that.

That leads on to future development and where to aim for!!!!!!

Trying to create a site that shows a portfolio for commercial/portrait work but also drives image sales is a tough thing to do, as they both have different objectives. The former should show a limited number of high impact/quality images showcasing your talent and style. The latter needs to offer a broad choice of purchase items to cater for varying tastes.

Once you have got this project tucked away and you are happy with it, I would investigate the idea of having two separate sites. You don't necessarily have to have two different URLs (although doing this and linking them would help with search engines), as you can do it on the one domain creating two seperate subdomains beneath it. Basically you have an intro page which links to the two sites, which would be something like:

portfolio.twopossumsphotography. com.au
to advertise your commercial and portfolio work,

and

art.twopossumsphotography.com.au
for your sales

-my domain wording isn't great as I'm just jotting this down, but hopefully you get the idea and can brainstorm the names. It would make for a neater solution that having everything under one roof.

One final idea, from an arty/sales point of view...

Have you thought of creating an art/montage page for the cards? You have some great images that would work well together.

This is most obvious one, as it is almost there in the gallery already with the way the thumbnails are set out(I hope that you don't mind me borrowing the relevant thumbnails!):





bump the cost of the montages up by 50c to $1.50 and make them a feature- 4 images for the price of two etc!!
You could even let people pick their own combination of 4 images!
 
DemiLion...

THANKYOU again....really good, detailed suggestions there..I really appreciate you taking the time to address them all. The "picky" points are very important to me, so I welcome your input. I want the site to be as good as it can be.

I am going to take that all into account and keep working on it.

LOVE the montage idea for the cards...clever.

FNG303 and Robert Hoy....thankyou also. Yes I def need to reduce the number of images and limit those frogs! I just need to confidently chose a few and stick with them.

FNG303...were you talking re the spelling of objet d'art? Its supposed to be like that...the french term for an object of artistic value. Perhaps that is a confusing term. I thought it was better than miscellanious or random.

Angela
 
On the website, it is spelled dárt instead of d'art.

Great photos by the way. I think for babies, you can put as many as you want because we can distinguish the faces. But for the objet d'art gallery, after a few they all look the same.
 

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